All Things Color Series: All Things Black. In this post I will talk about the color black and how it is mentioned in the Bible and what the color means. #Black
All Things Black
Black in the visual spectrum and using the TV and monitors of RGB (Red – Green – Blue), we see that black is the absence of color. Black means no visible light, or darkness. Imagine not being able to see anything at all that dark that black.
Now in print, you can get what is called registered black, that means it uses all the four color printing process (CMYK) to make that black. So here it uses all colors. That is 100 Cyan, 100 Magenta, 100 Yellow and 100 Black. In print the color black is represented by the letter K.
When we see black we also think about darkness. We also do think about black as evil.
Below are the responses I got when I asked people on Facebook this questions. When you think about the color black what do you think about?
- The starts shining through it.
- Utter Darkness
- Work….color of work outfit, dark, dismal, blank, always dusty if electronics are black or a car, and night.
- Johnny Cash
- Which shoes should I wear…lololol
In the Power Band Witnessing Bracelet and the Jelly Bean Prayer The Color black represents sin. (See below)
Black: Represents spiritual darkness because of sin.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. – Romans 3:23
BLACK – Black is for the sins that were made.
Number of times used in the Bible
So I used biblegateway.com to look up how many times the word “Black” is used in the Bible. Below is the number of times.
- New King James Version (NKJV) – 25 times
- King James Version (KJV) – 26 times
- New International Version (NIV) – 27 times
- Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) – 25 times
- English Standard Version (ESV) – 22 times
All things Black: As we can see each translation roughly uses that color about the same amount of times. This can include the word blackness (Job 3:5; Isaiah 54:16; Isaiah 59:9; Hebrews 12:18; 2 Peter 2:17, Jude 1:13), blacker (Lamentations 4:8) and blacksmith (1 Samuel 13:19, Isaiah 44:12; Isaiah 54:16). The color word usage was also tied to items like marble (Esther 1:6); hair (Leviticus 13:31 and Leviticus 13:37); horses (Revelation 6:5; Zechariah 6:2; Zechariah 6:6) and cummin (Isaiah 28:25; Isaiah 28:27).
Lexicons for Black
H7838
שָׁחֹר shâchôr, (shaw-khore’); or שָׁחוֹר shâchôwr; from H7835; properly, dusky, but also (absolute) jetty:—black. (Hebrew)
G3189
μέλας mélas, (mel’-as); apparently a primary word; black:—black. Black ink. (Greek)
Three are a total of 14 Lexicons for the word black usage. 11 Hebrew/Aramaic and 3 Greek. Click here to see the other usages.
All things Black: Looking at the two main Lexicons, it shows attributes of color (being dark in color) and also talking about night (lack of light or no light). These two can go hand and hand.
I did also read that it also was a way to say growing hot. Hell is referred to outer darkness because it is so hot that is that dark. Just think when you wear black on a summer day, it seems to make you much hotter than you are.
I used both E-Sword and BlueletterBible to help with the Lexicons.
ALL THINGS COLOR SERIES
Introduction | Black | Orange | White | Red | Blue | Yellow | Purple | Green | Pink | Teal